Theory
Motivation is “the driving force within individuals by which they attempt to achieve some goal in order to fulfil some need or expectation” (Mullins, 2007, pg.807). It is important for managers to motivate employees as they are more productive than unmotivated ones. Unmotivated employees can create poor customer service and a damaging reputation for Asda which would lead to loss of customers and sales, as well as low productivity and efficiency, incurring more costs for Asda.
There have been many theories proposed on motivation, and these theories can help provide managers at Asda with ideas and the framework to try and motivate their employees. Theses theories can be divided into two types: ‘content’ theories and ‘process’ theories. Content theories emphasise on what motivates individuals, while process theories focus on the actual process of motivation.
Maslow’s work on content theories of motivation was hugely influential, especially in workplaces. He developed the ‘Hierarchy of Needs’, where the needs of people are shown in a pyramid, representing a hierarchy of importance. At the bottom of the pyramid are the physiological needs, which are the most basic human needs such as oxygen, water, food. Asda caters to all these basic physiological needs for their staff, be it food and water or fresh air outside when staff are on their break. The next level of needs are safety needs, which include security, protection from danger etc. Asda have CCTV in place throughout the store and employ security guards at the entrance monitoring all activity, giving a sense of security to the workplace. Asda also maintains job security for employees as they give relevant warnings to employees if they are not performing as well as they should be. 3 warnings are given after which an official notice is given explaining to the employee that they are going to be fired. Following from safety needs are social/relationship needs, which include love, sense of belonging, and affection. Asda has tried to fulfill these needs by creating a 'buddy' system, where each employee is assigned a 'buddy' to whom they can confide in, whether it is dealing with problems at work or their private life. The next level is esteem needs, which include respect, self-esteem and esteem of others, recognition, status and appreciation. Asda has tried to fulfill these needs by organising events such as 'achiever's lunch' where the employee of the month is invited to a lunch with managers and other important and high-ranking figures at Asda, as a reward for all their hard work. The highest level of needs are self-actualisation needs which are needs to fulfil one’s full potential, to grow and develop. Self-actualisation can be achieved in Asda as they offer job promotions and training courses to workers, so they can climb their way up to the top within the company. Physiological, safety and social needs are described as low-order needs as they are fairly easily satisfied, and esteem and self-actualisation needs are described as high-order needs as they take longer to satisfy. Once a need has been satisfied, it no longer acts as a motivator, and so the needs of the following (ascending) level become the motivating influence, which need to be satisfied.
It an be argued that, to some extent, Maslow's Need Hierarchy is irrelevant for a company like Asda, as Asda tries to cater and fulfill all the levels of needs an employee may have. Hertzberg's two-factor theory may be more relevant for motivating employees instead. Hertzberg claims that there are two sets of factors: 'hygiene' factors and 'motivators'. Hygiene factors are those that if absent, can cause dissatisfaction and unmotivate employees. These factors include salary, job security, working conditions, quality of supervision, company policy and interpersonal relations. Motivators, however, are factors which if present, may motivate employees to perform better. These factors include sense of achievement, recognition, responsibility, nature of work, personal growth and advancement. Asda has tried to incorporate all the 'hygiene' factors into their employment policies to try and keep staff motivated, as without them they would be uninspired and demotivated. Asda offers a reasonable basic salary for their employees, although from the questionnaire it is evident that many do not share the same view. Many view the salary to be low and unsatisfying. Higher ranked employees, such as managers receive added bonuses along with their salary such as more holidays and larger store discounts.
Job security is evident at Asda because they would like to keep their staff within the company for a long period of time. Should staff start under-achieving and underperforming, they are given three warnings after which they are given an official notice of being fired from their job.
The working conditions in Asda are adequate according to the feedback received from the questionnaire. There are toilets and a staff room available for the staff to use. Staff are given a lunch break and provided with lunch should they want it. The lunch break usually lasts 50 minutes and they are also given a short 15 minute break during their day. If employees' shifts are longer than 8 hours, they are given shorter breaks more frequently to maintain productivity.
Many employees stated in their questionnaire that the level of supervision is too high given the simplicity of their jobs. Managers are constantly overlooking their work and 'bossing' them around. This is a demotivating factor and needs to change as if it continues it will continue to unmotivate employees since it is a hygiene factor. Interpersonal relations between colleagues are excellent, however, relations between managers and staff are poor and degrading. Many feel that they are not able to communicate effectively with their seniors and cannot express their unmotivation. This needs to change and better communication needs to be implemented if staff are to become motivated again.
Many of the staff expressed great negativity about the fact that they could not grow within the company. They also stated that their hard work was not recognised and so after a while they stopped working as hard as they felt demotivated. It is important that some of these aspects, such as recogition and personal growth are present in the company's policy as they can prove to be motivating to people, since these are known as the motivating factors in Hertzberg's theory.
Whilst many people have argued that people are not motivated by money, the staff at Asda have a differing view. The staff at Asda agree with Taylor's theory and views that "workers would be motivated by obtaining the highest possible wages through working in the most efficient and productive way". If employees were give higher wages, they would work more effectively.
Many of the staff at Asda voiced their their opinions of the work being montomous and boring, giving very little pleasure for the staff. They feel that there is little opportunity to advance their careers and there was not enough challenge or growth in their jobs. Given these charactersitics, Weaver suggests that many are motivated by money. Since many people within the Asda company are motivated by money, managers should look into introducing performance-related pay. Asda managers should adopt Weavers' approach, where employees receive direct cash rewards for above average performance. This is known as 'Theory M' programme of motivation.
Managers at the Asda Wembley store have recognised that morale and motivation is low among employees and so have tried to introduce new ways to motivate their employees to perform better. From the interviews conducted it was found that managers use extrinsic methods and intrinsic methods. Extrinsic methods consist of pay bonuses and a shopping discount for all their employees. Intrinsic methods consist of praising the staff when they have done a good job and showing appreciation towards them for the work they do.
During the Christmas period, managers try to motivate their employees more because of the peak rush they experience and so want to make sure their staff are consistently working hard and working efficiently and productively (rephrase). Therefore, to motivate their staff more, they introduced a Christmas scheme where line managers nominate store employees to receive scratch cards which reveal prizes that include CDs, DVDs and items of George clothing. This scheme has been proved to be successful and so managers should try and incorporate it throughout the year to achieve more productive results with their staff(www.employeebenefits.co.uk).
Victor Vroom proposed the Expectancy Theory, which consists of 3 elements:
- Expectancy: how likely it is the outcome will be achieved
- Instrumentality: reward for the person
- Valence: perceived attractiveness of an outcome eg. money
The theory basically stated that people are motivated because they desire a certain outcome, and are prepared to make sacrifices in order to achieve the outcome. The theory claims that if one of these factors are missing then motivation does not exist, and so it is important for managers at Asda to make sure they exist if they want to motivate their staff. The fact that this theory can be measured, makes it more realistic and appealing and it was the first theory of its kind with quantitative value.
Asda suffers from high labour turnover and needs to find ways to keep their staff motivated and retain them within the company, as this will be more cost effective for them as they will save money on training new staff. What Asda currently offers staff is a sharesave plan which allows employees to buy monthly shares in the company at a 20% discount. Asda have introduced this to make staff feel part of the company and hope that they stay within the company. Managers should try to introduce incentives for staff as from the answers in the questionnaire it is evident that many of the staff are motivated by financial means. Asda can also introduce competitions for staff to enter to win cash prizes. They can also award their staff vouchers to their staff in an attempt to motivate them eg. for younger staff they can award cinema vouchers. This scheme is relatively easy to implement by employers and by rewarding staff on a regular basis will motivate them to work more efficiently. Loyalty cards can be another incentive to use, where staff are awarded points when they have performed well, which turn into prizes the more points you collect. Such incentives show staff that their hard work is recognised and is a token of appreciation, and this is likely to make staff more interested in their work and perform better. Even simply thanking the staff for the work they do can have a positive effect as staff would feel their work is being recognised and appreciated and make them feel valued. To make the jobs more interesting, employees should be allowed to change their tasks frequently as it will provide more enrichment and allow employees to experience a change of surroundings, rather than being in the same place all the time and getting bored easily.
Offering staff flexible working hours may help to motivate employees as they can chose when they want to work. It also allows employees more freedom and allows them to have a better balance of their work and home commitments, which may make them happier and more positive and enable them to work better at their jobs.
Many of the employees stated in their questionnaire that they are never given any appreciation for the work they do nor do they enjoy performing the jobs that they are given, and only work for the salary. For them money becomes a psychological exchange for tolerating a miserable job.
Asda managers can also learn from the Hawthorne experiment conducted by Mayo, where employees were subject to change in their working conditions to see how it affected productivity. Whilst he expected that many employees' productivity would decline, he found the opposite with more being motivated and having productivity increase or remain the same. From this, Mayo concluded that communication should improve between managers and employees, managers should increase their presence in employees' work as the Hawthorne experiment saw that employees' responded more to the increased levels of attention that they were receiving, and greater team-work all increased productivity and motivation. Asda managers should therefore try to implement more team-work between employees and increase interest in and look after their employees.
To increase motivation amongst employees and make their jobs more interesting, managers at Asda can try to restructure the jobs. This can be done with: job rotation, job enlargement and job enrichment. Job rotation involves moving a person from one type of job to another, in an attempt to add variety and eliminate boredom. For example, employees may work at the check-out counters for an hour, then do stocking-up for another hour and then back to check-out etc. Job enlargement involves increasing the range of tasks and giving employees more responsibility, which many employees at Asda would welcome as it gives them more to do rather than just their normal boring tasks.
Managers at the Asda Wembley store need to listen to their employees' opinions if they want to improve motivation and productivity. By treating them as people and not machines given repetitious tasks, they will be able to gain from productive staff. Encouraging team work and commradary amongst their peers, motivation will be sure to increase.
